[note: since this is a visualization tool, and lkml doesn't like html email,
it's probably better to read the online version at
http://blog.fenrus.org/?p=5
in which I also show screenshots of the tool. The following text
is the first part of the online introduction]
Finding out why your Linux computer performs the way it does has been a hard
task. Sure, there is Oprofile, and even ‘perf’ in recent kernels. There is
LatencyTOP to find out where latencies happen.
But all of these tools are rather limited when the software stack that has
the performance issue is more complex than a single program. The tool that
comes closest to being useful is `bootchart‘, but that has a rather limited
resolution.
To solve this, I have been working on a new tool, called Timechart, that has
the objective to show on a system level what is going on, at various levels
of detail. In fact. one of the design ideas behind timechart is that the
output should be “infinitely zoomable”; that is, if you want to know more
details about something, you should be able to zoom in to get these details.
The rest of this blog post describes some aspects of timechart, using real
life examples and screenshots. However, it is really hard to show the power
of timechart on such a static page, to get a real feeling of what timechart
can show you really ought to try it out yourself.....
I'm still looking for a better name for the tool, so if you have any ideas
please let me know...
--
Arjan van de Ven Intel Open Source Technology Centre
For development, discussion and tips for power savings,
visit http://www.lesswatts.org
* Arjan van de Ven <[email protected]> wrote:
> [note: since this is a visualization tool, and lkml doesn't like
> html email, it's probably better to read the online version at
>
> http://blog.fenrus.org/?p=5
>
> in which I also show screenshots of the tool. The following text
> is the first part of the online introduction]
>
> Finding out why your Linux computer performs the way it does has
> been a hard task. Sure, there is Oprofile, and even ???perf??? in
> recent kernels. There is LatencyTOP to find out where latencies
> happen.
>
> But all of these tools are rather limited when the software stack
> that has the performance issue is more complex than a single
> program. The tool that comes closest to being useful is
> `bootchart???, but that has a rather limited resolution.
>
> To solve this, I have been working on a new tool, called
> Timechart, that has the objective to show on a system level what
> is going on, at various levels of detail. In fact. one of the
> design ideas behind timechart is that the output should be
> ???infinitely zoomable???; that is, if you want to know more
> details about something, you should be able to zoom in to get
> these details. The rest of this blog post describes some aspects
> of timechart, using real life examples and screenshots. However,
> it is really hard to show the power of timechart on such a static
> page, to get a real feeling of what timechart can show you really
> ought to try it out yourself.....
Nice! 'perf timechart' is IMO a really intuitive way to visualize
perf record output.
Text output goes only so far - patterns of scheduling (and patterns
of bad behavior) are a lot easier to notice in SVGs.
Ingo